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 | Laser printer toner refill by OUTBID (8/31/04 6:03 PM) reply | + / - | Hello to all, does any one know where to find a guide to refill laser printer toners? or if any one has a guide that could send it to my email?, I want to refill clients laser printers and I dont know how to open all the cartdriges, if any one has information even on specific model will be appreciated.
thanks to all
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 | Re: Laser printer toner refill by sue o (8/31/04 6:20 PM) reply | + / - | There really isn't a simple guide to refilling toner cartridges. Not if you are interested in doing it right. There is much, much more than simply filling the cartridge up with toner. If you are not willing to invest the time in learning to do it right, please partner with a local professional. You will not be doing your "clients" any favor by doing a refill job on their cartridges. Also, "refilling" by quick buck artists and other amatures is what gives this business a bad name and gives people the false impression that "refilled cartridges" do not work. Just check out the posts by most of the techs on this board that feels that "refills" are junk. If you are truly interested in developing skills in this area, there is a annual show in Vegas in Sept. Check out "rechargermag.com" for info.
Sue O
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 | Re: Laser printer toner refill by moe  (8/31/04 6:32 PM) reply | + / - | I was told not to reveal any more details about our site overhaul that is soon forthcoming, but there might be something relating to toner cartridges and refilling. I also can't say when that will happen, but somewhere between now and X'mas.
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 | Re: Laser printer toner refill by OUTBID (8/31/04 6:53 PM) reply | + / - | Sue thanks for the recomendation, I do want to do it professionally, that is why I ask for guides on how to do it, I know there is not an universal guide so indiviual guides are perfect, I would love to go to Vegas, the problem I am actually in Chile and it is quite difficult to get there ;-)
if you have any information to share with me I would appreciate it, basically I am looking for guides on the most popular models.
thanks
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 | Re: Laser printer toner refill by David (9/1/04 11:36 AM) reply | + / - | Sue - what a weak willed reply to DIY. Any one with the will to find out can do the job reasonably well. Try to fill one machine and check it runs OK, then do the rest. Never let anything beat you, thats why these firms charge inflated prices. David
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by moe (9/1/04 12:17 PM) reply | + / - | David, you have no idea how involved cartridge remanufacturing is. Every cartridge is built differently and requires different approaches to rebuilding them. If you're looking at one of those hokey sites like tonerrefillkits.com, that is entirely the wrong way to go about it. Drill and fill went out with the dinosaurs. Remanufacturing cartridges the right way involves a lot of supplies like drums, toner, cleaning blades, doctor blades, reset chips, etc. You also need quite a bit of specialized equipt. There are quite a few remanufacturers who do the bare minimum and charge high prices. That's not right and they usually don't stay in business long. The costs to do cartridges properly do justify the price the quality remanufacturers get.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by Anonymous (9/2/04 8:50 AM) reply | -1 + / - | Sue - the question asked for cart refill not a cart rebuild, hence my answer. You can not read into whats not written. David
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by Wes (9/2/04 9:32 AM) reply | +2 + / - | Toner cartridges are not the same as ink jet cartridges. To DO THE JOB RIGHT the drum need to be replaced the wiper blade needs to be replaced or properly inspected for reuse the corona wire assembly or PCR needs to be cleaned or replaced.
The waste toner hopper needs to be cleaned. The chips need to be replaced on chipped cartridges. And believe it or not!!! not all toner is compatable with other brands of toner. So if you don't completely clean out the toner hopper you will contaminate the new toner and turn a toner cartridge into a paper weight. Woohoo I saved money doing it my self!!!
Sometimes you can reuse the drum but you need to know what to look for so as you can see you can't just refill the cartridge and have a good cartridge.
Also what about toner leaks? if you don't look at the toner cartridge closely there could be a defect in it. Fill it and you just wasted your time. And finally to do the job right is not a do it yourself project UNLESS you have ALL THE SUPPLIES AND PARTS. Most suppliers are not just going to sell you just one wiper blade, Drum or PCR. What then?
We would be doing a dis-service to the industry and the readers of this forum if they just said sure go ahead and fill it...no problem.
Sometimes we can do more good by saying you might not want to try something than saying jump right in. That being said a google search might be of help to anyone wanting to refill their cartridges. Maybe if someong spends $20.00 or $30.00 for a refill kit that does not work is what people need to understand that to do the job right is not really a D.I.Y. project.
Wes.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by Rapid Refill Ink (9/2/04 10:44 AM) reply | + / - | Just my 2 cents. Ive been rebuilding laser and copier toner cartridges for almost 15 yrs. There is a lot involved in the remanufacturing process. There are drums in some cartridges, there are PCR rollers, there are DR. blades, wiper blades, there are reset chips, pins to remove, that you just cant pull out, there are many aspects to rebuilding toner cartridges properly. If you ever need any info, disassembly instructions on any cartridges, let me know and I might be able to send you the instructions.
Hope this helps,
Brent - RRI
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 | Re: Laser printer toner refill by Pshec (9/2/04 11:04 AM) reply | + / - | Brent,
If it possible please send it to me too.
Best Regards
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by moe (9/2/04 11:36 AM) reply | + / - | IF you guys will all have a bit of patience, we're planning on addressing the issue of refilling in the site upgrade, coming soon. It definitely will not be along the lines of tonerrefillkits.com Eventually, we hope to put a substantial dent in their business. What they are doing is so wrong. "Only fill the cartridge 1/3 in case it fails" This is their advice under the pretense of looking out for the customer so they don't waste the expensive toner. They're expecting it to fail is why they put it in there. Then they can sell you an expensive empty. They deserve to be put out of business.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by David46 (9/3/04 8:21 AM) reply | + / - | You folks ought to read the initial question - How do you refill a cartridge? If you want to go into the full servicing of it like many of you want him to do, then don't muck around buy a new cart. David
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by NormD (9/3/04 8:45 AM) reply | + / - | Frankly, I think it's a far greater service to provide information as to the pitfalls and realities of the situation, instead of just saying "here's how you do it, now go out on ebay and buy the cheapest refill powder sold."
I might have been interested in doing such a while back in ignorance. I have no interest now.
I suspect the vendors of the cheap toner refill kits may have the same high ethical standards as those who resold the free HP 6L/1100 cardboard "fix", or those who re-brand OpenOffice and sell that. But that's just a personal opinion...: )
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by Rapid Refill Ink (9/3/04 9:15 AM) reply | +1 + / - | Pshec,
Email me for the disassembly instructions you need for which type cartridge?
Brent - RRI
brenthenley@yahoo.com
www.rapidrefillink.com
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by bill (10/4/04 2:57 PM) reply | + / - | rapid refill ink, you seem to know alot about this and seem very helpful (not that u lot dont)i am setting up a re fill comp and would obviously like 2 do the job right so there are no complaints or damages, any chance you could send me some general info please, i'm new to the whole re filling thing and like many others im sick of being ripped off
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by Rapid Refill Ink (10/4/04 3:50 PM) reply | + / - | Bill,
If you need instructions, email me! Let me know which cartridges you are doing and I can send you the instructions.
Thanks,
Brent - RRI
www.rapidrefillink.com
brenthenley@yahoo.com
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by anonymous (10/5/04 7:05 AM) reply | + / - | All the major vendors of remanufacturing parts and supplies, S.C.C., Future Graphics, Densigraphix etc. provide remanufacturing instructions on their websites. also check out Recharger magazine.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by Chris (11/17/04 1:06 PM) reply | + / - | Wow boys,
17 Posts and except for the last post no answer at all!
I guess that is why they are called dicussion forums - "If you cannot persuade your opponent, at least confuse him as much as possible"
Great Job!!! Thank you for your concrete answers.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by moe (11/17/04 2:45 PM) reply | + / - | The sad thing is that most people think remanufacturing cartridges is easy. Just pour toner in it and away you go. That's why shady sites like tonerrefillkits.com exist. Poke a hole in it, fill with their extremely high priced toner and it will work for a couple hundred pages. This is from their site, pulling the wool over their customers' eyes.
Q7: What do I do if my cartridge "poops out" before I use up all of my ReChargX toner?
A7: Just order the appropriate certified "EmptyX" replacement cartridge (they clean and prep this one) and you are back on your way. This is why we recommend you only use 1/3 to 1/2 of the bottle of toner when you first refill your cartridge (because you need to save it for the EmptyX replacement you'll have to order). In this way, if for some reason your cartridge does "poop out" prematurely (it doesn't happen often, but since toner cartridges are mechanical devices, it can and sometimes does), you still have one-half to two-thirds of your toner left.
The fact is that the cartridges will undoubtedly fail part way through since they have more waste toner in the bin than it was designed to hold. The wiper blade is only designed for one cycle as is the drum. There are dozens of different toner cartridges and the remanufacturing procedure, toner, drum, blades are different for every one of them.
So you might think we're being secretive and not wanting to share the knowledge, but remanufacturing is best left to the experts, unless you want to donate to tonerrefillkits.com
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by Rapid Refill Ink (11/17/04 3:35 PM) reply | + / - | Good answer Moe.... Rebuilding toners is a complex thing. There are many componets that have to be changed. To do it right, you need to the "Know How". The best way to learn would be to find a local company that rebuilds toners, and get a job as a toner builder. I have not seen any classes or courses.
Hope this helps,
Brent - RRI
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by Andro (12/14/04 10:41 AM) reply | + / - | I've been using TonerRefillKits.com for some time, and I've been satisfied. I knew from the beginning that there was more to properly and completely remanufacturing toner cartridges then "just dumping in powder." I don't think TonerRefillKits.com was deceptive either about this.
The right way is usually the best way. But, sometimes, based on time and money, the quick and dirty way is acceptable.
(Save the arrows...)
LJA
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by att (12/14/04 2:10 PM) reply | + / - | How does one find out which are the good companies out there (especially on the web) that are reliable for refurbishing toner cartridges?
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by moe (12/15/04 6:01 PM) reply | + / - | Chances of finding a good company on the web are pretty close to zero. Finding a good company on eBay is zero. I can look at a cartridge and tell if it's been done right. There's really no way someone who hasn't worked with them could tell. Only way would be to try them for a period of time and see if you have problems. I was at a company today that stuck a new "rebuilt" in and it was making all kinds of grinding noises. They thought it was a printer problem which is why I was there. They had another "rebuilt" from a different company. It didn't make noise, but there were smudges on the left margin.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by James (12/16/04 3:22 PM) reply | + / - | The ginding noise that you heard was probably that the drum did not have enough lubricant on it when it was installed in the waste halve of the cartridge and the wiper blade flipped, you dont say what cart it was? There are many different toners now and all are made for certain carts, its true that the best way to refill is to strip,blow,and rebuild the cart with a new drum and wiper blade, the pcr can be reused if it is cleaned properly and not damaged, good remanufacturers build a more reliable cart than the oem.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by moe (12/16/04 5:44 PM) reply | + / - | I do have 15 years in cartridge rebuilding so I know exactly what the grinding noise was and also what was causing the smudges. They weren't our cartridges, so my only concern was convincing them to switch from the questionable no names they were using to our cartridges. Easy sell when you have 2 in a row bad and you have as good a reputation as we do.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by cai-printer (6/28/05 3:28 PM) reply | + / - | Where does the waste toner be stored for HP 4550 laserjet? Are all wasted toner stored in the drum, or in the color toner cartridge itself? I would assume empty the waste bin is important to prevent poop-out...
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by moe (6/28/05 3:37 PM) reply | + / - | The waste toner is stored in a hopper behind the drum. When the hopper fills up, it will shut the printer down. You can take off the end caps and carefully remove the white plastic drive shafts. Put them down in the same order as you took them out because they are not alike. Then bang on the side of the hopper until most of the waste is gone. It's kind of messy so do it over a large trash receptacle. Might want to wear a face mask.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by cai-printer (6/28/05 3:42 PM) reply | + / - | Does the printer make a lot of noise when the hopper is almost full? I have this printer make loud noise from time to time during printing. It sounded like from the drum area, or above the ITB. I am not sure what could cause that kind of rotating or shaking. Was the toner waste collection making that kind of noise? Thanks!
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by moe (6/28/05 3:56 PM) reply | + / - | There are 5 or 6 stirrers inside the waste hopper to keep the waste from hardening up and blocking the inlet. I suppose they could be making noise if there is enough toner in there to restrict their turning motion.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by Anonymous (6/29/05 4:23 PM) reply | + / - | Is there an easy way to empty the waste toner from the drum? The whole printer only has 6000 page count....Thanks for your help, Moe!
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by moe (6/29/05 4:51 PM) reply | + / - | There is only one way to do it. It's not really that hard. I gave you the quick down and dirty on how to do it in the previous post. Just make sure you know where all the screws came out of and where all the white plastic pieces go and in what order. Once you remove the white plastic pieces, the toner will go out past the stirrer portions which stay inside. Make sure when you put the white plastic pieces back on that they engage the stirrers.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by cjs (7/12/05 7:35 PM) reply | + / - | Thanks Moe!!!!!!!!
You have saved me a lot of grief.
I live in the outback of Australia and it is weeks to send my carts away for refill etc.
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| Re: Re: Laser printer toner refill by millbullard (2/10/06 8:08 AM) reply | + / - | I could definitely use some info, such as suppliers, and instr.
I have been working on faxes and copiers for a long time and
cust. are allways giving me the cores. If I had some inst.
i'm sure i could do it right. I do mostly panasonics such
as the ug3309, 3313 and hps as in 4s and 4000s. your help
is greatly appreciated.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by moe (2/10/06 9:09 AM) reply | + / - | It's really not as easy as most people seem to think. Check the reference section of this site. You'll see links to publications as well as remanufacturing instructions for popular cartridges.
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by chris (2/10/06 9:28 AM) reply | + / - | Moe's answers are pretty dead on. Each toner is different, and most require patience and expect dirty hands. wear a dust mask at the very minimum. and if you only "refill" the toner, don't expect much life out of it. Every Laser manufacturer designs their toner to last one cycle (drums and wiper blades and mag rollers). the Toner Market is 90% of their bread and butter (Lexmark was sueing remanufacturers all the time). Toner is where the money is at for HP, Lexmark, etc...why do you thing machines are out of date so fast nowadays?
The company introduce the latest printer, with a cartridge that holds half of the predecessor, and then charge the same price for the new toner....they can't lose. now imagine color laser...you're out @$1200.00 every time you have to change the belt, the drum and some toners.
I wouldn't recommend a toner refill job to someone i hate. just imagine coal mining...you'll have the same black 'smoke' come out of your mouth every time that you talk, no matter how clean the processing plant is. at least, the ones i've seen while on printer repair detail.
it is funny when color laser toners get refilled. everyone coughs up rainbows.
chris
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| Re: Laser printer toner refill by youngs (5/4/06 8:17 AM) reply | + / - | Quite a thread! There's a lot on confusion between remanufacturing and refilling and both have their place in the world! To answer the question first and declare an interest - we at TonerTopUp provide a very wide range of refill toners and instructions on refilling with the toner for most where needed.
We have experience of both remanufactured cartridges and refilling and suggest that both are of value for people.
Remanufacturing
Remanufacturing for All-In-One and many of the more compex cartridges involves dismantling, cleaning, replacing parts especially the Imaging drum, reassembly and testing. Instructions and training can be obtained from the suppliers of the components and to do it professionally and well it is important that you know what you are doing and follow the procedures. There are a significant number of cartrdiges which are simply toner feed devices where remanufacturing can mean pulling out the plug, cleaning and refilling. (Possibly changing the chip.) For these there is little different between remanufacturing and refilling.
There is rightly a huge sensitivity in the trade about the quality of remanufacturing (and a lot of sour grapes about people refilling their own too). There are definitely a large number of remanufacturers out there still still turning out poor quality product which tars the good quality ones with a bad image.
From our own experience of using remanufactured cartrdiges we had respectively 30%, 70% and 15% first life failure rates. These were small, big and big suplier companies respectively. I don't think any of these were acceptable failure rates but the carts were warranteed and replaced or refunded and it was still financially worth using reman carts. (However we were in "quality watch mode" and wasted some paper)
Refilling
As far as refilling is concerned it is always the case that a cartridge can fail during any particular run and will eventually do so if repeatedly refilled. For a user refilling their own this merely means that they have to monitor the print quality and decide on the moment when quality fails to meet their standard. Not necessarily onerous and for many well worth the effort. Many users anyway shake their carts when "empty" to squeeze tthe last prints out and so are in "quality watch mode" anyway. Residual toner can always be reused in the next refill and so really is not an issue.
For All-in-One carts where the imaging drum is included there is detailed research available showing that, because the wear is related to the number of revolution and not the number of prints and because a single sheet print run causes 3 times the number of revolutions per page as a long sheet run, the wear thickness on HPLJ4000 opc drums is engineered for the rated page life of single prints (plus a bit) and so will last up to 3 times that number of pages for long run print runs. (The figures were 6 microns wear per 10,000 sheets long run and 20 micron coating thickness.) The same principle applies to other models and this explains the practical field result that you can typically refill an All-In-One type cartridge between 1 and 3 times before quality deteriorates.
When you refill a cartridge you do not interfere with the inner components and so many of the possible problems of a remanufactured cartridge cannot occur.
Refilling is not for everyone clearly as it means a certain amount of messing around but we, like other refill toner suppliers, have a growing base of satisfied customers. we also have case studies showing high levels of savings and satisfaction. We promote ethically and transparently. We consider ourselves a valid part of the Toner aftermarket and our activities do not reflect poorly on remanufacturers.
Refilling FOR others is I believe problematic because it is not really possible to give a guarrantee that a cartridge will definitely last another life. There are exceptions for the many cartridges which are basically only toner reservoirs and perhaps a feed screw and which will typically last 5 -8 refills. Remanufacturers only clean and refill these anyway and so refilling and remanufacturing are effectively synonymous. We supply at trade rate to those who refill for others but always suggest that the client should be aware of the actual statistical nature of failures of refilled cartridges and unrealistic warrantees should not be offered. However given the performance of the worst end of the remaufacturing market for first refill the statistics on failure are actually possibly better!
We recommend to our clients that the most efficient way from both a cost saving and also an environmental point of view, given that most remanufacturers will only use "virgin" ie first life empties, is to start with good quality, guarranteed remanufactured carts that have had new OPC's fitted where appropriate and then to refill until failure. This gives the biggest cost saving and the best environmental return.
The ability to refill only exists because of the large and healthy remanufacturing industry which creates a demand for after-market toners and cartridge components.
I hope this will be accepted as a helpful and objective overview of the position!
Martin Young
www.tonertopup.co.uk
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